Pete Rose: Hall of Famer?

For those of you who don’t know who Pete Rose is, he is a baseball legend that many consider to be one of the best to ever play the game. He played for the Cincinnati Reds between 1963 and 1986. At the time of his retirement from playing, Rose held the record for hits, games played, at bats, and several other impressive records. After he stopped playing, Rose became a manager for the Reds. Soon into his managing career, however, there was an investigation into Rose and allegations of him betting on games as a manager. In 1989 the commissioner of baseball at the time, Bart Giamatti (sound familiar?) banned Rose from baseball for life.

There was really no controversy over whether or not Rose bet on games. The evidence was insurmountable. Phone records of calls made to bookies from Rose’s phone just minutes before the first pitch, countless betting slips found with Rose’s handwriting and fingerprints, and nearly $20,000 a day being bet on teams including the Reds. Regardless, Rose denied any allegations of betting on baseball and applied for reinstatement in 1997, but it was denied. Finally, in 2004, Rose did admit to all the allegations.

         The other day I saw this article in the news about a recent interview with Rose. According to the interview, Rose, who is now 73 years old, believes that one day his lifetime ban will be lifted and he’ll be voted into the hall of fame, even if its after he dies. The article caught my eye when I saw that it was Bart Giamatti, author of Take Time for Paradise, who had been the one to ban him in 1989. It was on August 23^rd that Giamatti banned Rose, and just 8 days later, on September 1^st, Giamatti died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51. The ban was the last of many significant things Giamatti did for baseball in his life. I think its interesting how Rose’s betting collides with Giamatti’s pure and sacred vision of how baseball, and sports in general, should be played as we read about in his book, Take Time for Paradise. He states, “Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with experience otherwise described as religious.” Going off that view of sports, it would make sense that Giamatti would ban Rose for betting on games. Betting on baseball games as an active manager destroys the feeling of “happiness or absence of care” that Giamatti refers to because it turns the game into just something to profit off and make money, almost like buying a stock.

Personally, I sympathize with Rose. For starters, he always bet on the Reds to win, never lose. He said in an interview with ESPN in 2007, “I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team, I did everything in my power every night to win that game.” As long as Rose wasn’t betting against his own team and throwing games, I don’t think it should have been quite as big of a deal. He wasn’t cheating the fans or the players. He still tried to win every night. There have been instances in the past of players allegedly throwing games, such as the Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series, and I absolutely think that is an offense deserving of a lifetime ban, but this is different. I don’t disagree with banning him from baseball at the time, but I do think at some point they should re-instate him to baseball and honor him by selecting him into the Hall of Fame. He truly was one of the best to ever play the game, and he should be honored as such eventually.